Written by Jody Clounch (PPOA board member/Sheriff’s Security Officer) As most of you know, Sheriff McDonnell informed PPOA about the “probable curtailment of 106 Security Assistant positions at TPD-Metro” back in September. In a nutshell, Metro wants to eliminate those 106 positions, of which 90 are actually filled by SAs. Naturally, PPOA immediately requested a meeting and within a few days, we sat down with department execs and supervisors from Personnel, Employee Relations and TPD-Metro in an effort to preserve jobs and avoid layoffs.
PPOA received an update from Employee Relations on October 31. That update included the following nine bullet points:
- First and foremost, management at Metro has not verbally committed to saying whether they will temporarily keep on the SA’s beyond January 1, 2017 date. However, they have indicated they feel confident that they will have a staff in-place and up and running at that time. The Department is going to work on the assumption that all SA’s will be displaced from their assignments at TPD and the Department will continue its reassignment efforts.
- The Department has identified 22 vacant SA positions department wide.
- There are currently approximately 17 SA’s in backgrounds for other positions
- There are 5 SA’s who will be attending either an SO or CA academy classes in the near future.
- The Department anticipates having to locate positions for 30- 40 SA’s, but believes there are enough positions in other job classifications to accommodate this figure.
- The current SA seniority list is being distributed to all SA’s for accuracy.
- In the near future, the Department anticipates conducting a Job Fair, which will include all SA’s Department wide and is projected to take place in early December at the Gateway Office located in the First Interstate building
- The Department plans to follow guidelines similar to those used in previous job fairs (Mira Loma, PDC-South, etc.) that your Association is familiar with.
- In order to plan a fair and impartial job fair, the Department will provide your Association (PPOA) with the following:
- A seniority list for all SA’s.
- A list of all available positions
- Dates and times and locations of the job fair 4. And a copy of the letter to be sent to SA’s regarding the need for the Job Fair and guidelines for implementation.
Most importantly, the update from Employee Relations concluded with this line: “As stated since being notified of MTA’s intentions, the Department is fully committed to retaining (and relocating) all personnel working in the SA job classification.”
I’ll share more updates on this as I receive them.